Homosexuality & Mental Illness

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-06-19 02:50pm

Does anybody have DSM-IV-TR and can tell me what is written on page 576

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-06-19 03:13pm

The reason why I asked for above is a person on another board stated:

As for the APA, I invite you the read both the DSM-IV-TR and the APA website, (which I had posted at one time earlier this year). Much humor can be had in watching the same organization expressing two polar opposites over similar subjects.

He then told me to turn to Page 576 and compare it to this

Seeming to indicate that they contradict each other...

He states that he is a Messianic and a creationist and we know how they take things out of context

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-19 03:15pm

What section of the DSM IV is that? I have access to an online copy but it is broken up into sections not pages.

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-06-19 03:16pm

I think Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-19 03:31pm

I will see what I can do... looking for anything in particular?

As it seems the copy I found is in spanish... and I speak german...

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-06-19 03:36pm

That's the section containing Gender Identity Disorders. That has nothing to do with being gay whatsoever, and (shouldn't even be in there, anyway), it's a typical creationist slander (to both sides) to compare homosexuals and people suffering from intersex spectrum conditions. The two stem from completely different areas of the brain structure and both are, as we know now, the result of structural deviance in the brain development, not any kind of alterable influence.

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-06-19 04:53pm

I was looking at text on conversion therapy from Wiki and noted that the Royal College of Psychiatrists also considers it rubbish

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-19 05:03pm

Kitsune wrote:I was looking at text on conversion therapy from Wiki and noted that the Royal College of Psychiatrists also considers it rubbish

There is not a single professional organization in existence that does not...Unless you go to like... nigeria or something

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2008-06-19 10:03pm

On the note of homosexuality, I once heard that its identifiably genetic. Is this true and how do these genes exactly express themselves?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-19 10:20pm

Zixinus wrote:On the note of homosexuality, I once heard that its identifiably genetic. Is this true and how do these genes exactly express themselves?

There is some evidence that there is a gene linked to homosexuality on the Xq28 locus, but it has not been replicated. As to gene expression and why that has not been replicated...

This is a copy-paste from another thread, but so long as I am rehashing stuff...

Basically, your genes dont just code for phenotype X and hope you live in an environment conducive to X. Your genes actually code for phenotypes X, Y and Z, the expression of which are controlled by environmental conditions.

Figuring out what genes control what with humans is very very hard. First off, they are redundant, one gene has several functions and it is just a matter of when and where they are expressed. Then there is the pesky little problem of not being able to create knock-out babies. Yes, I said knock-out babies, where we destroy a gene and see what effect it has on development.

If you have ten genes that act during sex differentiation in the brain, each with a big allele and a small allele A and a for example, and you need 7 big alleles to have a significant chance of developing gay, but they are not specific as to which ones, you probably wont find them, they will get lost in the statistical background noise. To use an example. Mostly because the experiments required to do the work will never, ever get past an institutional review board(damn ethics committees... I hate them sooooo much).

Justforfun000 · Post by **Justforfun000** » 2008-06-20 01:19am

Even that very simplistic encapsulation that Aly is trying to put forth for us laymen should be enough to make us realize that nothing is really simple in terms of biology and behaviour. It makes me even more angry at religious pricks that have the unmitigated gall to state emphatically that homosexuality is a choice. I'd bet dollars to donuts that almost NONE of them have even a decent High school science education of any note, let alone a college degree, and yet they have the fucking arrogance to think their uninformed opinion really means something.

I really do find that I seem to be getting LESS patient these days then before. I thought age was supposed to mellow you. Heh.

Justforfun000 · Post by **Justforfun000** » 2008-06-20 01:36am

Ahhhh. Just came across a new article extremely relevant to this discussion. What's your opinion Aly?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/111843.php

Genetics Behind Male Homosexuality Could Be Explained By Sexually Antagonistic Selection
19 Jun 2008

A new model has been proposed to explain the evolutionary origin and maintenance of male homosexuality in human populations in the context of Darwinian Evolution by invoking the idea of sexually antagonistic selection. This was proposed in an article released on June 17, 2008 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Homosexuality in males is widely considered to be influenced by factors that are both psychosocial and genetic. The latter is suggested by a few items. Namely, the high correlation of sexual orientation in identical twins points to a genetic component. Additionally, there is a higher frequency of homosexuality in males who belong to a maternal line of male homosexuals. These same effects have not, however, been shown for female homosexuality -- so these two phenomena very likely have different origins and dynamics.

This report, written by an Italian research team made up of Andrea Camperio Ciani and Giovanni Zanzotto at the University of Padova and Paolo Cermelli at the University of Torino, explores a number of different hypotheses for the potential genetic basis of male homosexuality. These included: the genetic maternal effect on sons; the heterozygote advantage, such as in malarial resistance, in which hybrids for a trait have desirable traits; and sexually antagonistic selection.

Under Darwinian evolutionary models, genes that are passed on to offspring are preserved or amplified in the population while those that do not decrease in frequency. Generally, homosexual males reproduce less than heterosexual males, so a genetic basis for male homosexuality is difficult to explain. However, work published in 2004 by Camperio Ciani and collaborators indicated that females in the maternal line of male homosexuals were more fertile than other women.

This led the team to consider sexually antagonistic selection to provide an explanation. In this type of selection, a reproductive advantage is experienced by one sex while a reproductive disadvantage occurs in the other sex. Previously, this sort of evolution has been documented in insects, birds, and some mammals, but it has never been seen in humans.

A large set of models were examined by the researchers and excluded individually if they implied that alleles would go extinct too easily or overtake the population. The paper concluded that the only model that fit the empirical data was based on sexually antagonistic selection, based in particular on two genes, at least one of which must be on the X chromosome, which determines the maternal genes in male babies. This model implies that there is an interaction between male homosexuality and increased female fertility. This complex dynamic results in the maintenance of male homosexuality at a stable but low frequency, as well as a hereditary effect on male homosexuality through the female line.

This model could potentially change the focus of opinions on male homosexuality. For instance, perhaps homosexuality should not be seen as a trait that is detrimental to a population because of the reduced male reproduction it implies, but rather in context of providing gender specific benefits by promoting female fertility. This could be an explanation for the evolutionary origin of this genetic trait in humans.

Sexually antagonistic characteristics are only just being widely recognized in the human population. It is understood as one of the key mechanisms by which higher levels of genetic variation can be maintained in populations. This could be the first example of many potentially sexually antagonistic traits to be found in humans. This in particular could help create better understanding of the many genetically based sexual conflicts in humans, most of which are as of yet unexplained.

Notably, if the genetic mechanism behind male homosexuality is as described in this model, there are interesting implications on the overall fertility of a population. That is, the proportion of male homosexuals in a population could signal a corresponding proportion of females with higher fecundity -- this along could account for a positive net increase in the fertility of a whole population when compared to populations without such a system. This increase will become higher as the population baseline fertility decreases, meaning that these genes could provide a buffering effect on factors that would otherwise lower the overall fertility of a population.

About PLoS ONE

All works published in PLoS ONE are open-access. Everything is immediately available�"to read, download, redistribute, include in databases and otherwise use�"without cost to anyone, anywhere, subject only to the condition that the original authorship and source are properly attributed. Copyright is retained by the authors. The Public Library of Science uses the Creative Commons Attribution License.

PLoS ONE is the first journal of primary research from all areas of science to employ both pre- and post-publication peer review to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLoS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the Open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.

Sexually Antagonistic Selection in Human Male Homosexuality.
Camperio Ciani A, Cermelli P, Zanzotto G
PLoS ONE 3(6): e2282.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002282
Click Here For Full Length Article

Written by Anna Sophia McKenney
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2008-06-20 01:42am

Kitsune wrote:The reason why I asked for above is a person on another board stated:

As for the APA, I invite you the read both the DSM-IV-TR and the APA website, (which I had posted at one time earlier this year). Much humor can be had in watching the same organization expressing two polar opposites over similar subjects.
He then told me to turn to Page 576 and compare it to this

Seeming to indicate that they contradict each other...

He states that he is a Messianic and a creationist and we know how they take things out of context

He needs to do a little better checking his sources. The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association. The website he linked is the American Psychological Association, a completely different organization. The American Psychiatric Association is made up of physicians, and psychiatry is a medical model of diagnosing and treating mental illness. Although the American Psychological Associations' members are trained to use the DSM to diagnose and treat mental illness, the two groups don't always agree or see eye to eye.

There's no contradiction in what he's showing you; the two APA's are not the same organization.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2008-06-20 01:53am

Check you can check the organizations out for yourself.

www.apa.org

http://www.psych.org/

Both use "APA" as an acronym, but are very different. This is exactly why people who know absolutely jack shit (like him) shouldn't brag about what they think they know.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-20 02:00am

I get more and more angry with each passing day. You are not alone. I mean, the best we can do is make testable predictions about what we will see with proxy measures, trying to knock down every hypothesis we can generate until one withstands the battery.

Fuck, I am frustrated by the lack of tools at our disposal. We can find the genes that control for other aspects of development through the use of other species like mice. But exclusive homosexuality is highly derived. It almost does not exist outside of humans, we cant exactly use rats, nor can we manipulate the gene expression of human infants.

I am still reading through the paper posted above, but it brings me to another ranting point. Damn social scientists. "Why yes, a complex biological trait, that we know from brain scans is set in prior to birth is the result of socialization! Look at us! We are relevant!"

I want to bludgeon them.

Then there are the religious people, you know the ones who say I am inferior to them and not worthy of my constitutionally guaranteed legal rights? Every fucking time I see a sanctity of marriage argument what I actually see, what the subtext tells me is "You are not a person"

Fuck them. Right in the ear

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-06-20 02:10am

Ahhhh. Just came across a new article extremely relevant to this discussion. What's your opinion Aly?

Put it this way... I love having access to every peer reviewed paper published since 1955... I have the original paper.

There is cooberating evidence for this hypothesis in another paper, though the authors do not specifically address this hypothesis, and that is that gay men tend to have larger extended families.

I did however forget to include antagonistic selection in my list of possible genetic models. I should have.

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-06-20 08:43am

I don't have access to the materials myself but someone came up with a retort to what he stated:

FYI, Gender Identity Disorder has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It refers to transsexuality, transgender identity and transvestitism and they are only disorders if there is evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Where a persons sexual orientation is causing them clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, it falls under the heading of Sexual Disorder NOS. In both cases, to fall under the DSM IV criteria, there has to be evidence of a clinically significant problem.